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TEHRAN -- Members of Iran's Azeri minority hurled stones in violent protests on Monday, enraged by a newspaper cartoon they said insulted them, a semi-official news agency and a witness said. The ILNA labor news agency said thousands protested in the northwestern city of Tabriz and that police used teargas to try to disperse the crowd. The exact number of demonstrators could not be confirmed.

A resident said furious protesters threw stones at banks and smashed windows.

``They are angry because ... we (Azeris) are insulted by a cartoon,'' Soraya, a 40-year-old mother, told Reuters by telephone from Tabriz.

The cartoon, which appeared in Friday's edition of the official Iran newspaper, showed a boy repeating the Persian word for cockroach in different ways, while a cockroach in front of the boy asked ``What?'' in Azeri.

The Azeris of northwestern Iran speak a language related to Turkish. Although Azeris have many luminaries among Iran's commercial elite, Iran's majority Persians mock them as stupid in their jokes.

The conservative Siyasat-e Rouz daily on Sunday said a crowd of Azeris had set fire to Iran's local office in the city of Orumiyeh, where Azeris make up the majority of the population. They account for about 25 percent of the overall population.

ILNA said the protesters chanted slogans against the cartoon in Azeri outside the provincial governor's office, which some of the crowd pelted with stones.

``The police are carrying out their responsibilities. The gathering in Tabriz is illegal,'' an Interior Ministry official, identified only as Razavi, said, according to ILNA.

He added police were trying to restore order.

Earlier on Monday, some students at a university in Tehran also protested against the cartoon.

Some ethnic groups, including in Arab and Kurdish areas of Iran, have complained about unfair treatment from Tehran but the Azeri community usually has few complaints.

Azeri people attend a rally to protest against an allegedly insulting cartoon, in Tabriz some 600 kms (360 miles) northwest of Tehran, on Monday May 22, 2006, and according to news reports, police used tear gas to disperse the protesters. The government closed one of the country's top three newspapers Tuesday May 23, detaining its editor and cartoonist, for publishing a caricature that caused members of Iran's Azeri minority to riot in protest. (AP Photo/Roozbeh Jadiduleslam)

Two of the Iranian capital's main universities have been rocked by overnight protests and clashes between students and police, press reports said.

Some 40 police were lightly injured by stone throwing in front of the Tehran University dormitories, Tehran's police chief, General Morteza Talaie, told the official news agency IRNA.

Sources contacted by AFP said the protests were against the changing of university heads and the forced retirement of some professors.

But General Talaie said Tuesday night's unrest was "provoked by 20 or 30 supposed students joined by thugs from outside the university". He said police responded with "tolerance and restraint" and arrested no students.

"These people had their faces covered, but some of them have been identified," the general said.

Tehran University was the scene of violent clashes in 1999, when students protested over the closure of a pro-reform newspaper and the subsequent intervention by Islamist militiamen from the Basij force.

Another university in Tehran was also reported to have seen protests late on Tuesday.

Students at the Amir Kabir University, one of the country's most prestigious technical colleges, demostrated against "the intervention of Basij in elections" for members of the Islamic Student Association -- one of the few remaining pro-reform groups still operating on campus.

The student news agency ISNA said protestors shouted slogans including "we don't want the Islam of the Taliban" and "death to reactionaries and dictatorship."

The protests are taking place at Tehran University and at Amir Kabir University, one of Iran's most prestigious technical colleges.

AFP quotes unidentified sources as saying the students are protesting the changing of university rectors and the forced retirement of some professors.

Iran's IRNA state news agency quotes Tehran's police chief, General Morteza Talaie, as saying the overnight clashes in front of the Tehran University dormitories left some 40 law-enforcement officers lightly injured. Talaie also blamed "thugs from outside the university" for attacking the police with stones.

Tehran University was the scene of violent clashes in 1999, when students protested over the closure of a reformist newspaper.

Iranian students stand beside a fire during a demonstration at the Tehran University dormitory complex early in the morning May 24, 2006. REUTERS/Stringer

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Stone-throwing Iranian students fought police and Islamic vigilantes on Wednesday in protest against restrictions imposed by the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, witnesses said.
Students who covered their faces with scarves lit fires outside dormitories through Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, photographs showed. By dawn the streets were littered with hundreds of stones they had thrown.

Police spokesman Mohammad Tourang told the ISNA students news agency five policemen had been injured in the clashes and that the police made an unspecified number of arrests.

Senior student leader Abdollah Momeni said up to 2,000 students had gathered for the protest over the expulsion of some students and the way authorities had been handling critics. He added 20 had been seized by Islamic vigilantes who broke into the dormitories.

"The main reason for the objections in recent days goes back to the limitations imposed on universities and political students after the new government came to power," Momeni said.

"Some active students have been expelled and some students face mass summons before disciplinary committees. We are also objecting to recent dealings with critical professors such as Ramin Jahanbegloo," he added.

Iran earlier this month said it had arrested philosopher Jahanbegloo on charges of espionage. He specialised in liberal political philosophy and worked extensively on developing understanding between Iran and the West.

Other student witnesses said the crowd had chanted "Down with despotism" and hurled stones at police cars outside the dormitories, breaking their windows.

Iran's last major nationwide student demonstrations were in 2003, when hundreds of students were arrested

Last edited by cyrus on Wed May 24, 2006 3:00 pm; edited 1 time in total

Tehran, Iran, May 23 – Students demonstrated on Monday and Tuesday in Tehran’s Amir Kabir University (Polytechnic University) against the government’s repressive policies, a student who took part in the rally told Iran Focus.

During Tuesday’s protest, students threw stones at the university dean’s office, shattering several windows, after they were prevented from entering the campus by agents of Iran’s State Security Forces (SSF).

The demonstrators then forced their way through the guards into the building where they began chanting anti-government slogans. They have vowed to continue with their protest until their demands are met.

While foreign ministers met in London to finalize measures to persuade the Iranian regime to suspend uranium enrichment, the country's ruling clerics will be facing the most determined opposition they have seen in three years.

In Tehran, university students staged a second day of strikes over the firing of eight professors and the new policies enacted by Tehran University's president.

In Tabriz, the regime tried to quell riots earlier this week over a cartoon depicting members of the Azeri minority as cockroaches.

In Qom, the theocracy was absorbing the aftershocks of a candid interview from Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, who told an Iraqi news agency that the current Islamic Republic has failed to deliver the democracy it promised in the 1979 revolution.

The stirrings inside Iran are the most serious challenge to befall the mullahs since the protests that accompanied the 2003 commemorations of the July 9, 1999, Tehran University student rebellions. They also suggest the regime that America and Europe are now hoping to cajole into suspending its nuclear program may be more fragile than intelligence agencies recognize.

One of the steering committee members of Iran's largest student organization chapter at Tehran Polytechnic University, Abbas Hakim Zadeh said in an interview from Tehran Tuesday that his organization was now 90% in favor of rejecting slow reform in favor of nonviolent resistance.

"About nine years ago, the reformist movement under Khatemi took place, but Khatemi could not deliver and the Iranian people have no longer any faith in the reformist movement," he said.

Those words should come as no surprise to observers who have followed the intellectual evolution of dissident journalist Akbar Ganji, who was released from Evin Prison in April and is the author of a manifesto rebuking the reform movement for its timidity and calling for direct elections of the supreme leader.

But Mr. Zadeh's comments could be shocking to diplomats in Western capitals and analysts in Washington pressing for negotiations with Iran in part because it would re-empower the political movement of President Khatemi, the reformer to whom Mr. Zadeh was referring.

Yesterday, Mr. Zadeh said the country's largest student organization, Takhim Vahdat, rejected any direct talks between America and Iran if the negotiations centered around security guarantees in exchange for promises on nuclear enrichment.

"If there is any dialogue and conversations or negotiations between the Islamic Republic and the international community, whether the United States or other countries individually or collectively, if it is around the nucleus of human rights, democracy and the openness in Iran, it is something worthwhile to consider," he said.

"However if the idea is for Iran to get security guarantees embedded in it that the regime can suppress the human rights and the will of the people, that is something the Iranian student movement, the Iranian labor movement and the Iranian women's rights groups reject firmly and totally."

The atmosphere at Tehran University was tense as student protesters entered into the second day of a strike designed to oust the school's president appointed by President Ahmadinejad, Amid Zanjani.

In an interview on the Voice of America's Persian service, a student activist at Tehran University, Mohsen Sabri, said he estimated that 1,200 students were clashing with security officers. His colleague and a member of the national steering committee for Takhim Vahdat, Ali Nekomesbati, estimated that 15 students have been kidnapped since the sit-in strike began and another 70 have been injured.

The fracas at Tehran University flared as Iran's president took measures this week to calm tensions in Tabriz after hundreds of Azeris began burning parts of the city to ostensibly protest a state-run newspaper that ran a cartoon depicting Azeris as cockroaches.

The protests this week are a direct rebuke to Mr. Ahmadinejad. While Iran's president does not command the military or have final say on domestic and foreign policy decisions, he does have the power to appoint personnel in government agencies.

Since assuming power in August, Mr. Ahmadinejad has stacked the security services, universities, prison warden system, and social service departments with ideological allies from the ranks of the paramilitary group he is associated with, the Basij.

A colleague of Mr. Zadeh at Tehran Polytechnic University, Bijan Pouryousefi, said yesterday that Iran's student movement was reaching out to form a more unified front with labor unions and women's groups.

"The civil struggles of the Iranian people for democracy and human rights is alive, but it is fragile," he said. "You see this with the women's groups, the labor unions and this as a whole. We need the support of the international community by supporting democracy, and other organizations can provide the basis for the support of our movement."

But Mr. Pouryousefi was careful to say that at least Takhim Vahdat would reject direct funding from America or any foreign government. "When you talk about money, we will have our character assassinated. There are human rights organizations that can defend the rights of the individuals. The subject of the money is separate," he said.

Takhim Vahdat was created in the late 1970s to support Ayatollah Khomeinei and the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In recent months, the regime has tried to restrict the organization's ability to elect a national coordination committee by attempting to appoint students who favor the regime. Last summer the organization led the fight to release Mr. Ganji from jail and encouraged students to boycott elections that resulted in Mr. Ahmadinejad assuming the presidency.

Anti-regime slogans in the protest gathering of students in Tehran University campus

Translations By Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

According to the received reports, on Tuesday night, May 23rd, in an attack on the Tehran university student dorms located on Amir Abad Street, vigilantes hirelings of the Islamic regime assaulted large number of students; many were injured. Some of them are in critical condition.
Following the termination of several of the top professors and members of the social sciences facaulty, the students gathered for a protest; however around approximately midnight, of Tuesday night gangs of armed and vicious Basij vigilantes and murderous revolutionary guards attacked the college campuses and proceeded to set fire to the student dorms as well as the students belonging. They also began to physically assault and beat the students with bats and clubs.
The Students residing in the dorm had retired for the night and were mostly asleep when that attackers poured into the building and were taken off guard; many began to escape from the campus in their nightgowns and pajamas. Shortly after the attack, at 1 am, students gathered on the campus to protest the attack and began to chant anti-regime slogans.
The angry students chanted:
Freedom, freedom, our inalienable right, nuclear energy is the regimes craft.
System of supremacy must be abolished, Khamenei the supreme leader should be executed.
Kabul yesterday, today Baghdad, Tehran tomorrow
We want neither Sheikh nor mullah, we curse the Spirit of Ruhollah [Khomeini]
What, what are the use of your slogans, we want justice, water and bread
Death to dictators
Death on the Islamic Republic
Student dies, does not accept disgrace
Students also referred to recent demonstration of their fellow students in cities around the Azerbaijan province and chanted: "Tabrizi, Tabrizi, we stand behind you..."
The regimes fear and horror of the formation of nightly student and popular uprisings, caused the regime to disconnect all cellular communications networks in many parts of Tehran city, including Revolution Avenue, the location of the University of Tehran, North Amir Abad, Yoosef Abad and Vanak Square; this was meant to cut the connection between students and protestors so that security forces can continue their violent sweep around Tehran.
According to reports, the residents of the Amir Abad district, especially around the university campus, hearing the sound of shooting and armed conflict gathered around the Tehran university campus, in order to assist the students in opening the gates of the university to rescue students caught under the the attack of the Basij vigilantes; however oppressive forces stationed in the alley took to throwing tear gas and using electrical nightsticks in order to disburse the crowd and the students.
According to witnesses, dozens of students and people, during the raid regime officials were arrested.
Also according to students, the regimes vigilantes, in addition to the devastating the student dorms took to stealing and looting what little belongings the students had. The administrative and academic groups of Tehran University, could not be reached for more information; the regime fearing further widespread protests, announed that they will keep the university "semi-closed" on Wednesday.
STAY TUNED....
http://www.iranpressnews.com/source/013200.htm

Orumieh, Iran, May 25 – Anti-government protests and clashes erupted in dozens of towns and cities in north-west Iran on Thursday following a 100,000-strong rally in the city of Tabriz by enraged Azeris on Monday against the publication of an insulting cartoon in an official daily, eye-witnesses reported.

In the town of Marand, thousands took part in a violent demonstration chanting anti-government slogans, a dissident who requested anonymity told Iran Focus by telephone.

In nearby Orumieh, government forces opened fire on a rally by several thousand protesters near the local headquarters of the state broadcasting company on Wednesday, killing at least people, witnesses reported. Previously, the offices of the daily Iran, which published the cartoon, were set on fire in the city.

Protests also flared on Thursday in the cities of Zanjan and Ardebil which had been the scenes of mass rallies since Monday.

During Monday’s demonstration in Tabriz, angry Azeris poured in the streets, attacking state-owned buildings and banks. Police used teargas to disperse the protesters.

Dozens of state-buildings were also set on fire in several other towns.

Orumieh, Iran, May 26 – At least six anti-government protestors were killed by security forces during clashes late Thursday in the north-western town of Naqadeh, according to dissidents.

The incident occurred as more than 1,000 Iranian Azeris took part in a rally outside the governor’s office.

Angry protestors torched both the governor’s office and the local office of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.

In the course of clashes between protestors and security forces, at least six people were killed and dozens injured.

The deaths brought to at least nine the number of protestors killed by government forces since Monday when a wave of anti-government protests began in dozens of towns and cities in north-west Iran against the publication of an insulting cartoon in the official daily Iran.

On Monday, at least 100,000 Azeris rallied in the city of Tabriz. Subsequently, thousands have taken part in often violent demonstrations in the towns of Orumieh, Zanjan, Marand, and Ardebil.

In the third day of the protests of students at Tehran University, the casualties already include 18 students who have been temporarily fired and 5 teachers or professors who have been coerce fully asked to retire. Toorang, police’s public relations officer for the Greater Tehran told ISNA news agency that a group of “pseudo-students” appeared among students at the Tehran University campus and by taking over the control of a section, engaged in attacking passing vehicles and public property. He added that those who were directing the violence were not university students.

Tehran’s police chief too spoke of the arrest of 8 “pseudo-students” in connection with yesterday’s student protests, claiming that between 20 to 30 opportunists participated in the violence.

On the other hand, Gamsari, the student deputy of Tehran University has said that some of the student demands were raised under the cover of other demands, but they had crossed the government’s red line of tolerance.

And while there are no reports in local publications or news agencies, the conservative pro-government Keyhan newspaper carried a story under the heading of: “The violence of Representative of the American Congress in Tehran University.” In its special report, it wrote, “Yesterday using the pretext of the resignation of some teachers from the College of Law of Tehran University, a group of students belonging to Daftare Tahkim Vahdat (Office of Student Solidarity which is the largest student organization in Iran) staged a protest and disrupted classes on campus. A few days earlier, this group which is led by Ali Afshari and Akbar Atri who had gone to the US Congress and given a speech against the regime and the Iranian nation, thus adding another shameful chapter to this student organization, has been trying over the past few days to disrupt the calm atmosphere of the scientific centers of the country through violence and clashes.”

Students on the other hand, report a completely different story. In short, they say that students from Tehran University staged a demonstration outside the campus to commemorate 2 Khordad elections (i.e. the day when on May 23 of 1997 Mohammad Khatami was elected president and launched a reform movement in the country) and to protest the transgressions of university authorities into student and teacher domains. Students chanted slogans such as “We do not want nuclear energy” and “Leave Palestine to itself, Focus on Us”. They also requested a change in the management organization of the institution and the manner in which the university community was treated.

One student who had climbed the fence of the campus told Rooz Online that there were clashes all over the campus and that students lived in fear. He added that at the entrance to the campus, there were many shoes and sandals, and that there was a lot of blood that had been spilled. He further contended that there were at least 12 individuals who had been hurt in the clashes 5 of whom were in critical condition, while there was no way to take them to a hospital. “We students have not wanted any clashes, but the law enforcement force acts in a way as if it wants to deny us any peaceful event. While we want both sides to retreat, they strive to assault and enter the campus,” he said. “If they retreat, we too shall return,” he added. He also said that the police was extremely brutal in its attacks so that many students could not even walk away from the scene on their own.

Last Wednesday too most of the universities in Tehran witnessed unrest. Campus police whose force has tremendously increased in size since the beginning of the Persian year (March 22, 2006), and during the last 48 hours has put more officers in the field. Being novices may partly explain the extreme brutality used by the force in these events. Azeri students who had staged their own demonstration to protest the publication of insulting cartoons in pro-government Iran newspaper also joined the students in their calls. They began their strike at the Pardis College of Literature and continued for a few hours.

Reporters who had been assigned to cover the event were stopped by the campus police and not allowed to enter it, even though one can always talk to students through the railed fence of the school. Azeri students demonstrated on the campus of Tehran University under a banner that read “We are Turks” and ended their march after issuing a declaration in which they called for the restoration of the suppressed rights of Turkish speaking Iranians.

Yet another protest was staged at Tehran University’s College of Law and Political Science in which some 2,000 students participated. These students protested the assaults on the students on campus and the arrests of other students. This group which began gathering at about noon, ended its demonstration at about 7pm with an ultimatum that if student demands were not met by Saturday, they would again stage new protests.

Observers have estimated the size of these protests to be the largest since the unrest two years ago this month. Students from Allame-Tabatabai, Amir Kabir and Khaje Nasir universities too joined the protesting students from Tehran University.

Students ended their protest and demonstrations after reading their statement of demands, which included the return of dismissed teachers. They also demanded an apology from officials for violating their student rights, the release of 5 arrested students, the removal of security measures on campus, recognition of their right to organize and remain active, an investigation into the situation of the dismissed students and also the group summon of students before the university disciplinary committee.

Iranian policemen try to disperse Azeri demonstrators holding up Farsi banners that read "Long live Azerbaijan" outside the culture ministry in Tehran. Four people have been killed and 43 others injured in northwest Iran during protests over a cartoon in a government newspaper deemed insulting to ethnic Azeris

TEHRAN (AFP) - Four people have been killed and 43 others injured in northwest Iran during protests over a cartoon in a government newspaper deemed insulting to ethnic Azeris, a police official was quoted.

The report came as Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, accused his country's "enemies" of trying to provoke ethnic unrest while asserting the alleged conspiracy would be defeated.

General Hassan Karami, commander of security forces in Iran's West Azerbaijan province, told the ISNA news agency that the casualties occurred in the town of Nagadah -- around 50 kilometers (30 miles) from where Iran borders both Iraq and Turkey.

The area is populated by both ethnic Kurds and Azeris.

"The area is now calm," asserted the general while also reporting 20 arrests in Nagadeh and another 15 in nearby Urumiyeh.

Referring to Turkey's outlawed separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, he also said "two armed members of the PKK were in the crowd" in front of a public building in Nagadeh, and that they were being hunted.

There have been a number of reports of rioting by ethnic Azeris in the northwest after a government-run newspaper published the offensive cartoon, which depicted an Azeri as a cockroach.

Ethnic Azeris, concentrated in northwestern Iran, account for some 25 percent of Iran's population. The judiciary has shut the paper and arrested the artist and editor responsible.

According to the semi-official ILNA agency, the northwestern town of Ardebil also saw violent demonstrations overnight Saturday with banks and shops attacked.

ISNA also reported some 200 Iranian Azeri students gathering around the parliament building in Tehran Sunday before being dispersed by anti-riot police.

But supreme leader Khamenei blamed Iran's "enemies" -- a term usually used to refer to the United States, Israel and sometimes Britain.

"Provoking ethnic differences is the last resort by the enemies against the Iranian people and the Islamic republic," he said in a meeting with Iranian MPs. "There is no doubt that this plot will be defeated."

Khamenei underlined that "Azeris decisively defended the Islamic republic and its integrity during the war" with Iraq which raged from 1980 to 1988.

"Insulting the Azeris was an unwise mercenary move to provoke unrest," the deputy head of the judiciary, Hojatoleslam Ebrahim Raeesi, was also quoted as saying Sunday.

"Today the enemies are seeking to break the unity in the country. On one side they want to create a conflict between Arabs and Iranians, and on the other side they resort to Shiite-Sunni differences," he added._________________I am Dariush the Great King, King of Kings, King of countries containing all kinds of men, King in this great earth far and wide, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenian, a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having Aryan lineage

May 30, 2006: New photographs available from recent protests by Christian Iranians in the Northwest city of Ourimieh, in West Azerjaijan province; and from student protests in Tehran.

Worried at the dramatic growth of Christianity in recent years, Ahmadinejad pledged in November to drive Christians from Iran. "I will stop Christianity in this country," Ahmadinejad reportedly said. (See the Dec. 19 posting below)

In Gorgan, in the northern province of Golestan, an Iranian Christian who converted from Islam 33 years ago has been held incommunicado by the secret police for the past three weeks, the Christian news service Compass Direct reports. Ali Kaboli, 51, was taken into custody on May 2 from his workshop in Gorgan. No charges have been filed against Kaboli, who has been threatened in the past with legal prosecution for holding "illegal" religious meetings in his home, says Compass Direct.